Luck-Skinny (4)
An employee of the Loki Office informed her after accepting a request from someone.
"Tower Master, this post on the gallery seems to be about the area you were dispatched to. Why don't you take a look?"
That was how she ended up checking the Fixer Gallery, only to find this situation.
She had finished her paperwork long ago and was dozing off in her chair, but this was more than enough to wake her up. Blood rushed to her head, turning her face red with anger.
"These bastards, still pretending to be human..."
Anomaly incidents occurred at least once a week under normal circumstances.
When you reached the level of representing a fixer office, you knew so many fixers that it felt like multiple incidents were breaking out every single week as they took turns getting caught up in them.
Coincidentally, that was exactly the situation Kim Lokhee found herself in.
It had only been three days since the Window Da-112 incident ended, and this was already the second case.
Including a job that had cropped up at the Loki Office in the meantime, it was practically the third.
When she arrived at the scene, the convenience store owner was curled up on the floor, coughing, looking as though he had already been lynched by a mob.
His face and body were covered in bruises. He seemed to have paid his dues, but Kim Lokhee wasn't about to stop there.
She immediately grabbed the collapsed man by the collar.
There was no need to get close—in fact, she didn't want to. She despised even touching those who betrayed humanity.
An invisible force lifted the convenience store owner high into the air.
"Ack... cough...!"
"You know how to save the people who were captured, don't you? Speak, now!"
The store owner was swung around in the air so violently that the onlookers began to wonder if they should step in and stop her.
After spinning around for who knew how long, the moment he touched the ground, he shrieked.
"I-I know. I know, but..."
"But?"
"It's weird! It's... different from the blood donation bus I used to know...! I didn't run away on purpose, I ran because I was genuinely terrified...!"
"You son of a— You fed it a hundred people, and now you're saying you were scared? Does that make any sense?!"
"Ugh...! I'm sorry. I'm so sorry!"
"Just tell me the details."
The store owner's story went like this:
The inside of the blood donation bus looked like an abandoned hospital. If you wandered around, you would find a clean hospital bed that looked completely out of place. Once you lay down on it, needles and tubes would crawl out from somewhere to draw your blood.
And that was it. A moment later, the surroundings would revert to the bus, and you could just walk out.
Since all they had to do was block people from entering, its hazard rating would have been classified as 1 (Safe), assuming it had been properly categorized.
"But... it was originally a passive entity. As long as you didn't go inside, it didn't crave blood or anything..."
Limping, the store owner rushed into the convenience store and unfolded a crumpled piece of paper with trembling hands.
On it, written in blood in a crude scrawl that mimicked human handwriting, were several lines:
"Look at this! It's throwing a fit demanding blood! I realized it was way beyond my ability to handle, so I ran!"
Whether it was the Cheong Union incident or now.
It seemed human greed always made anomalies more threatening.
Kim Lokhee glared at the store owner with a disgusted expression, then threw a punch.
She had wanted to avoid touching him, but she simply couldn't hold back.
"You absolute idiot!"
"Argh!"
"Of course it got excited because you kept feeding it humans! If I were an anomaly that usually only ate the occasional stray human, and then suddenly got to feast like this, I'd threaten you for more too! It probably thought, 'When else am I going to get a full meal if not now?'"
"Ah, aaah... ugh..."
The store owner dragged his rear along the floor, clutching his stinging cheek.
"But... if I didn't do this, my family..."
None of the people surrounding the store owner showed the slightest sympathy for his excuse.
And of course they wouldn't.
In this day and age, just owning an independent convenience store was enough to classify someone as middle class.
*Sigh.*
Kim Lokhee sighed and muttered quietly.
"Are there any fixers here? If you have acquaintances who are familiar with this type of anomaly, please contact them. I'll make some calls as well."
"Yes, ma'am!"
"Understood! We have to save the people!"
About thirty minutes passed.
Finally, Kim Lokhee managed to get in touch with a Na-grade fixer who had experience dealing with a similar anomaly to this aggressive blood donation bus.
"Yes, yes, I see. So it's surprisingly weak to external force. We'll try that right away. Thank you for your cooperation!"
"...How is it? Did they say to attack from the outside?"
"Yes, Boss... I mean, Tower Master. They said the bus is like a mouth used to swallow prey, so we should beat it until it spits everything back out."
"Understood. Everyone, prepare to attack—"
*Crunch!*
A thunderous roar echoed through the area.
Startled, the crowd looked for the source of the sound and found the blood donation bus.
"What is that?"
"Did you see that just now?"
The appearance of the bus had completely changed.
As if crushed by a giant from all sides, the vehicle had crumpled to less than a third of its original size.
Everyone turned their gaze to Kim Lokhee at once.
"Did you attack it?"
"...I haven't done anything yet. I was just about to."
"Then that is..."
At that moment, another loud *thud!*
*Thud! Thud! Thud-thud! Thud!*
The multiple buses lined up, packing the alleyway, began to crumple one by one in sequence.
The crowd looked at Kim Lokhee again, and she shook her head in denial.
"Something inside must be... Ah."
Suddenly, a thought struck Kim Lokhee.
*Wait.*
The location of Window Da-112 was southwestern Seoul.
Haengbok Convenience Store was also in southwestern Seoul.
Although it turned out to be fake, the IP address that 'AnomalyLivingAGoodLife' had intentionally shown was also the Southern Seoul Quarantine Center, located in southwestern Seoul.
*Could the one rampaging inside right now be...?!*
The person Kim Lokhee wanted to meet was definitely inside that bus.
She didn't know when they had heard the news and rushed over, but they must have slipped into the bus amidst the chaos.
She hadn't expected to get an opportunity like this less than three days after staying at Baek San-a's office. Talk about good luck!
"Everyone, now is the time! Attack it and make it throw up everything it ate!!"
*Gush.*
There was no other word to describe the current situation than *gush*.
Or to exaggerate a bit, *gush-gush-gush*.
The moment I entered the hospital, it burst.
Every single pipe, without exception, burst.
Buried pipes, exposed pipes—whatever was in sight began to rupture, pouring out torrents of crimson liquid that flooded the hospital corridors.
"...Strange."
Having evolved from a mosquito, I had realized that the blood of a single species all shared the same root.
Going a step further, anomalies or abilities that manipulated 'blood' also fell into the same category.
In other words, the blood donation bus and I were distant relatives of sorts.
But relatives or not, when blood met blood, a clear hierarchy was always established.
Blood always flowed from the weaker to the stronger, and the weaker was fundamentally bound to submit to the higher.
"I haven't even undone a single cross. What's going on...?"
I had sealed all my blood away.
I thought it wouldn't be strange if the bus sucked my blood the moment I stepped inside.
So why was the opposite happening?
The blood was drawing toward me on its own.
Were the crosses not working properly?
"Could it be?"
Was it because of the unique nature of this space?
Since the entire space was made of blood, perhaps it was naturally resonating with mine?
If so, I might be able to have a chat with the owner of this space without even removing the crosses.
That was the best-case scenario.
Furthermore, I might be able to easily suppress any blood-bearing living creature I encountered inside this anomaly space with a simple click.
Just by walking around, the blood will gather near me. That will weaken the power maintaining the space, causing it to collapse from the inside.
Since the corridor was filling with blood, swimming would be easier than walking.
Alright, let's swim.
"Blood-donation-bus-kun. To be honest, I've never been to a swimming pool either."
A swimming pool was a luxury for someone whose daily routine consisted of eating, sleeping, and working.
It wasn't that I refused to set foot in one because I was obsessed with the stereotype that it was a playground for normies! Absolutely not!
"Since it's a hospital, the corridors are wide. Perfect for swimming."
A human would never do something as insane as swimming in a pool of blood.
But I was a blood-attracting mosquito!
Hehehe!
"Oh, oh. It works, it works."
I paddled happily down the seemingly endless corridor.
At some point, I got used to floating in the blood and even tried doing the backstroke.
Lying on my back, I couldn't help but hum a tune.
As I got used to the pipes bursting around me every time I swam past, it started to feel like a cinematic special effect.
The bomb girl's school pool scene was truly legendary...
Had about ten minutes passed?
The pipes stopped bursting, and the blood that should have flooded the entire corridor had somehow gathered into a disc-like shape beneath my body.
The corridor, which had been longer than a hundred-meter track, had shrunk so much that I could now see both ends.
It was as if the entire space had been compressed.
"You're quite pitiful too. If that convenience store owner hadn't found you, you'd still be quietly hunting in the wild."
Honestly, I didn't like to immediately blame humanity whenever a problem arose.
But the last two incidents really made me want to sigh at how awful humans could be.
"Still, I can't let you live. The moment you attacked humans, you were branded a Qliphoth. Some people almost died, so you probably won't ever become a Sephirah."
Why did I spend a whole year lurking on the gallery without showing any of my true intentions?
It was because, in this current world, anomalies were fundamentally perceived as dangerous.
I had to keep that in mind.
Only by proving I wasn't dangerous could I live in the city, and eventually make my way into the city center.
To reach the treasure we desired, I was willing to play the fool as much as it took.
"...Still, I'll do my best to ease your grievances. Compared to those Qliphoth that just kill humans on sight, you're on the nicer side."
Not long after, a heavy *thud, thud* echoed.
A loud noise, as if someone was pounding on the blood donation bus from the outside, reverberated.
It meant the bus's domain was breaking, connecting this place back to reality.
White cracks began to spiderweb across the world, which had been nothing but darkness except for the pool of blood.
As if gravity had inverted, the figures of people slowly began to float up from the pool.
Most of the people swallowed today floated toward the sky one by one...
Watching the last person ascend, I tilted my head in confusion.
"...? What's this? One person is missing."
And of all people, it was the one I was looking for.
Where did Cheong Harin go?
I patted the pool of blood, which had shrunk to the size of a washbasin, and asked.
"Hey, you're short one person."
*Splash, splash.*
I slapped the surface of the water as if slapping someone's cheeks...
Suddenly, a hand shot out from the water.
I reflexively grabbed the hand and pulled it up.
I figured it was highly likely to be Cheong Harin.
"Wait. Who are you?"
But the person who emerged was Harin, yet not Harin.
A person who had never been affected by an anomaly and thus had black hair and black eyes had suddenly emerged with white hair and red eyes.
The pool of blood completely vanished.
Immediately after, the presence of the blood donation bus that had filled the space disappeared as well.
Flashing open, Cheong Harin(?) opened her eyes.
The voice that came out sounded like Harin's original voice mixed with one pitched about three octaves lower.
"I am the Atoner Rubina. I humbly beg to become a servant of the Lord of All Blood. Please forgive this unworthy blood for not bowing before its parent first."
Like I said earlier.
Unless there were special conditions, the one with the thicker blood would always become the ruler.
Usually, they would obey the commands of the higher-ranking entity absolutely without resistance, but occasionally, some would personally pay their respects for the sake of survival.
Those with deep grudges or reasons they absolutely had to survive fell into this category.
They likely did this to avoid being completely absorbed by the higher-ranking entity, which could happen if they submitted silently.
...But why did you have to move into Harin's body of all places?
"What happened...? Did you eat Harin?"
"I dare assure you, absolutely not. I wished to speak with the Lord of All Blood, but an accident occurred along the way, resulting in this form. Please rest assured, the original owner of this body is merely asleep."
Suddenly, I remembered telling Harin to bring back the gummies no matter what.
Did she somehow find a way to escape while trying to fulfill that request?
And that was why she was donating blood?
"...Was Harin donating blood?"
"Indeed."
Of all things, Harin had recently survived a near-death experience where she was briefly exposed to my blood.
Perhaps that had increased her affinity for anomalies.
And just like that, the only pure human in our office has become an anomaly agent.
I had absolutely no intention of running a blood insurance service in this lifetime...
Don't you feel like you can hear it ringing in your head?
The melody I used to spam on the Fixer Gallery whenever I was bored.
"We highly recommend trying our blood insurance service for a monthly subscription of just 0.99 credits..."